Rifts

No Fun; 2009

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Though it sometimes feels like drone music will be forever relegated to the fringes of the indie world, an impressive batch of bands and labels have sprung up recently to counter that idea. Alongside bigger acts such as Sunn O))) and Grouper (not true drone, but plenty drone-y), artists like Emeralds, Black to Comm, and Yellow Swans are each tugging the style into intriguing directions. Daniel Lopatin, who records as Oneohtrix Point Never and shares a label with Emeralds, could plausibly be lumped into this group but also exists outside of it. Where others bring to bear a wide range of instrumentation in creating these glistening, open-ended sounds, Lopatin does so using only electronics (synthesizers and arpeggiators, primarily) and as a result, his music is arguably more distinctive and often more difficult to pin down.

Because he's worked outside the label structure and released albums on limited-run cassette and CD-R until now, Lopatin's music also hasn't been easy to find. But Rifts, a 2xCD collection of his material since 2003 (including all three Oneohtrix Point Never full-lengths-- Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind), seeks to correct that by compiling just about everything he's recorded as OPN to date. At two and a half hours long, it's a dizzying amount of music and virtually impossible to absorb in one sitting but for anyone with a passing interest in drone or ambient music, it's worth setting aside the time.

Part of the reason Rifts feels like a crucial listen is that Lopatin's approach is so thoroughly his own, to the point that trying to attach it to one genre doesn't really work. At turns icy and serene, at others frenetic and twisted, it feels like a modern sci-fi remake of minimalism and kosmiche-- there are long, repetitious builds with big openings between notes that suggest vast space and long drift. Intricate synth arrangements unfurl over long stretches in tracks like "Immanence" and "Ships Without Meaning" to create a sense of endless glide. In this capacity, Lopatin proves he can reconstruct drone on his own terms, but on Rifts' more forceful, tech-y songs he shows that's not the only trick up his sleeve.

The three LPs joined together in Rifts were supposedly intended as a trilogy, and while they do work as a unified whole, it seems wisest to approach the record as a compilation. The sheer size of it is daunting and you don't lose much by listening to its separate movements individually. Within these smaller pieces, Lopatin oscillates between the long-form mechanized whir described above and shorter tracks that push the album forward and draw back your attention after lengthy drifts. More Blade Runner than 2001: A Space Odyssey, "Computer Vision" and "Betrayed in the Octagon" use chopped-up, rapid-fire synths for propulsion and quick tonal shifts to add color. This is precisely the kind of music some would criticize as robotic and unfeeling, but for such heavily computerized sounds, Lopatin also shows a way with mood-- a song like "A Pact Between Strangers" is dark and threatening, like walking into a strange home with all the lights off.

But maybe what's most impressive about Rifts is that Lopatin creates a singular kind of noise-- there just aren't many albums out there that sound like this-- and rides it for nearly three hours without repeating himself very often. In this sense, the recent LP it reminds me of is Dâm-Funk's Toeachizown, in that the vibe is inseparable from the artist, clearly the work of one person with a novel agenda and the chops to see it through to the finish. And like Dâm-Funk's, it's the type of music that doesn't knock you over the head at first, but sort of seeps into your pores over time, uncovering new pleasures when you inevitably come back for more.